This invention relates generally to transportation and storage of a wind turbine blade and more specifically, to methods and apparatus for containing, storing and/or transporting rotor blades.
Some known rotor blades, such as, but not limited to, wind turbine rotor blades used to generate electrical power from wind, can be rather large (e.g., some exceed 50 meters in length and 4 meters in width). Because of their size and/or fragility, these large rotor blades may be damaged during transportation from a rotor blade manufacturer to the location the rotor blades are used. For example, some known rotor blades may be damaged during loading into and/or unloading from at least some known transportation containers. Such damage may degrade performance of the blade.
Rotor blades may come in a variety of different sizes and shapes. Accordingly, at least some known transportation containers are sized to fit the largest blade, which may increase a weight and overall size of transporting smaller blades. An alternative to using containers uniformly sized to the largest blade is to provide different containers for differently sized blades. However, providing different containers may increase a cost and/or difficulty of transporting rotor blades, for example because of possible logistical difficulties of providing containers of the proper size for each shipment and/or additional manufacturing and/or design processes.
At least some known rotor blade transportation containers may be transported using more than one mode of transportation, for example by ship, truck, and/or rail. However, some modes of transportation may have restrictions on large loads, for example, limits defining a maximum height and/or width of the load. For example, when transporting large loads over land, the container height may sometimes be limited to about 4.0 meters. Height and/or width limits may facilitate ensuring containers clear bridges, overpasses, and/or other obstructions located on overland transportation routes. However, such limits may increase a difficulty of transporting more than one rotor blade in a single container, which may increase a cost of transportation.